To choose between MBTI & Enneagram
MBTI and enneagram
The Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
It is a psychological assessment tool that determines the psychological type of a subject, following a method proposed in 1962 by Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother Katherine Cook Briggs.
It serves as a tool in the identifications of the psychological dominant of people in management or issues in the context of interpersonal relationships.
In the context of Analytical Psychology, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), a Swiss psychiatrist, brought theoretical elements including the existence of “psychological types”. This invention was published in 1921.
From his invention of psychological types, researchers developed theoretical approaches, including Soviet Union and MBTI in the United States.
About 2 millions of people per year carry out a MBTI test.
Correspondence with Enneagram
We can establish correspondence between the MTBI and the Enneagram. 1 Enneagram type can correspond to several MTBI types and vice versa. But the opinions on the correspondence diverge. Below is a summary table from different sources.
The MBTI instrument has four sets of letters:
Extra / introversion
indicating whether you get energy from being around people or from time spent alone.
Sensing / iNtuition
indicating whether you become aware of specific facts and concrete details or prefer to focus on hunches and the big picture.
Thinking / feeling
indicating whether you tend to make decisions based on logical analysis and the principles involved or prefer to decide by considering your values and promoting harmony for the people involved.
indicating whether you prefer your life to be planned and like it when things are decided or prefer to go with the flow and like keeping your options open.
The 16 Personality Types
(order of frequency : % of population)
13.8 %
Defenders or Protectors.
Their prime motivation is to serve others. They are sympathetic, warm, caring and easy to get to know.
12.3%
Supporters or Providers
In groups they will work towards building harmony amongst the team members. They visibly support and respect rules, regulations, traditions and authority.
11.6 %
Examiners or Inspectors
They have a keen sense for right and wrong and they have a strong ability to handle details. ISTJ’s may appear cold and uncaring because of their ability for logic and objectivity. They are decisive and practical when it comes to managing people.
8.8 %
The Artists or Composers
They crave what’s new and exciting. They crave freedom and dislike too many rules, regulations and the routine. Although introverted, somewhat shy and reserved rather than outgoing, they will treat most people very warmly and with care.
8.7 %
The Supervisors
They focus their keen observational abilities on real-time activities and facts, where they will sense the minute something is not working correctly and take immediate action.
They are down to earth and practical. You won’t see ESTJ’s dreaming about the future. They are busy taking care of business. They may appear cold and uncaring because they are analytical, objective and logical.
8.5 %
The Performers or Entertainers
For ESFP’s the world is a stage. They are warm, caring and friendly.
They are quick to gain the friendship of others. ESFP’s prefer not to have to supervise or manage others. They thrive on excitement, variety and new experiences. They do not do well with routine repetitive tasks.
8.1 %
The Champions
They make enthusiastic, outspoken, inspiring leaders who Champion the cause of their choice. They are catalysts and can help people see what changes need to take place.
ENFP’s are extraverted and very outgoing. They tend to be superb communicators.
5.4 %
The virtuoso
They are driven to perfect their particular skill set whether it be playing golf, performing ballet, operating sophisticated machinery or building a house.
ISTP’s are the most adventurous of all the 16 types. They are known for loving action and excitement especially when it involves piloting machinery such as motorcycles, airplanes, speed boats and fast cars.
4.4 %
The Mediators or the Healers
They are highly intuitive about people. They rely heavily on their intuitions to guide them.
INFPs are constantly searching for meaning and value in what they do. An INFPs job must offer meaning and value and it must be fun.
They are introverted, reserved, and somewhat shy.
4.3%
The Promoters
Naturally outgoing they excel at communicating and persuading others. Their enthusiasm and aura of excitement is picked up by others who find ESTP’s very exciting to be around.
Because they are logical and objective, they may appear somewhat cold to others. Focused in the here and now, they are enthusiastic, straightforward and action oriented.
3.3 %
The Engineers or the Architects
They live in the world of theoretical possibilities. They see everything in terms of how it could be improved, or what it could be turned into.
INTP’s live primarily inside their own minds, having the ability to analyze difficult problems, identify patterns, and come up with logical explanations.
3.2 %
The Inventor or Innovator
Their unique perceptive abilities allow them to see new ideas and opportunities everywhere. They thrive on new experiences of almost any kind.
ENTP’s may appear cold and unsympathetic due to their natural tendency to be logical, objective and analytical.
ENTP’s are quick both verbally and intellectually. They frequently enjoy a good argument just for the sport of it.
2.5 %
The Mentors
They thrive on guiding others. ENFJ’s are focused on people, not things, not machines, not ideas, but people.
They are warm and caring and able to build deep relationships with others.
They are not logical and objective. Rather they base decisions on how they feel about a person or a situation.
2.1 %
The Strategists or Architects
Of all 16 types, INTJ’s make the best planners and strategists. They can see many moves ahead. They naturally create contingency plans.
INTJ’s are hard to get to know and may appear cold until they have time to relate to you.
INTJ’s are natural leaders, however they frequently prefer to avoid the spotlight and work in the background.
1.8 %
The Leaders
They are well suited for grasping complex situations, absorbing vast amounts of information and for being very decisive.
Their decisiveness, their ability to see future possibilities, and their outgoing nature add up to make them the leader of leaders.
Very confident in what they know and what they can do.
1.5 %
The Councelors or the Confidants
INFJ’s are gifted with a greater clarity of perception of inner, unconscious processes than all but their INTJ cousins, making them the second most intuitive of the 16 types.
Being artistic and creative, they live in a world of hidden meanings and possibilities.
INFJ’s enjoy building deep relationships with a few close people. INFJ’s are gentle, caring, complex and highly intuitive individuals.
There are between 3 or 5 sources because some sources may be redundant
The MBTI is static, like many psychometric tests, with a bipolar approach (choice between left-handed or right-handed, extrovert or introvert, ..). This on 4 axes (ESTP). This results in 16 personality possibilities (not to be confused with the 16PS) with a static label of entrepreneur, entertainer, mediator, … .. In the scientific field, a stable, reproducible and relatively simple tool is a prerequisite to be accepted and allows measurements over time.
Its foundation is cognitive, and highlights the management of conscious information (collection, classification in a temporal dimension).
- How do you collect the info? do you go into the detail (sensitive) or do you look rather in the global (intuitive)?
- Do you classify information according to logical criteria (Thinking: true or false) or according to subjective criteria (feeling: right or wrong) to make a decision?
- Are you waiting for more information (Perception) or are you drawing conclusions and decisions quickly (Judgment)?
- To do, are you looking outward (others, the world) or centered on you?
MBTI and motivation
The MBTI will not deal with motivation (which will engender different behaviors depending on the situations) and neither unconscious defense mechanisms.
In other words, the MBTI indicates “how a person behaves” whatever the situation, with these strengths in the forefront, when the enneagram indicates “why does a person behave this way” and the possible variations according to the situation (dynamic approach), with in the first line the weaknesses (unconscious).
People may have the same behavior but different motivations. The enneagram will be able to make these distinctions more easily.
Enneagram is based on an empirical approach (or clinical: neurosis) and the various defense mechanisms put in place and their automatic unconscious uses that influence our behavior. The origin is of psychoanalytic tendency (repression, search of love during childhood – emotional degradation or passion or motivation by deficiency). The interpretation is cognitive with the use of inappropriate beliefs or counterproductive values (cognitive distortions – fixation – and self-reinforcing passion). Its use is in line with cognitive-behavioral approaches of today where we do not search in the past what disturbed us, but how to better live with, here and now.
Dynamic or static
The enneagram is dynamic because the person oscillates between several mechanisms of defenses and thus several behaviors according to the situation and the period. This makes it a powerful tool but hardly usable by scientists in psychometric measurements.
To resume, the implicit theory of personality (JP Leyens – Are we all psy?):
“Do not confuse personality and attitude .. my personality is who I am … and my attitude depends on who you are and how you behave”
With the approach of the enneagram a person can evolve, modify inappropriate behaviors, adapt his motivations. She does not find herself locked in a box.
Depending on your objective
Finally, and most important in the choice of psychometric tools or personal development: What do you want to do? to have the picture at the instant “t” of a person (very useful in a recruitment phase when you search for a profile identified beforehand, but a little less useful in the context of personal development) or be able to act by optimizing behaviors and interpersonal relationships (personal or team)?
In the professional management of a team, its optimization depends on your ability to understand what motivates people and what motivates you. The well-being of everyone. Not only the visible part of the iceberg (conscious motives: salary, recognition, …) but also and especially the immersed part (unconscious motivations, passions and fixations). You must answer “how do I motivate my team? “.
In conclusion, these 2 tools are differentiated by the different use of cognition and the choice will depend on your goal (identify or motivate). One used the cognitive approach to identify measurement criteria and from this it anticipates the static behaviors, when the other uses cognition to explain variable behaviors and to be able to better act on them (to better understand, to better welcome and to better support ).
Then we can express that those 2 Tools can be complementary according to your goals.
In conclusion, MBTI and Enneagram
The MTBI will be static, and in a cognitive approach, highlight the management of conscious information (collection, classification in a temporal dimension). But it will not deal with motivation, which will engender different behaviors depending on the situation, and neither unconscious defense mechanisms.
In other words, the MBTI indicates “how a person behaves” in any situation, when the enneagram indicates “why a person behaves this way” and the possible variations of behavior depending on the situation (dynamic approach).
People may have the same behavior but different motivations (and then different types). The enneagram will be able to make these distinctions more easily.
Which makes it two complementary tools.
Notes
The MBTI is a registered trademark of the Myers Briggs Foundation. As a result, only practitioners licensed for this purpose can officially pass an “MBTI® test”. OPP holds the rights to use the test in Europe.
- Prohibition of MBTI as part of a job interview
- The two co-creators of the test “did not have any training in psychology
- In addition, there are multiple criticisms of the effectiveness of the test, which would miss key aspects of the personality.
under the right of short quote (French)
Big 5
In psychology, the Big Five are five central traits of the personality empirically proposed by Goldberg (1981), then developed by Costa and McCrae in the years 1987-1992. They constitute not a theory but a reference for the description and the theoretical study of the personality (And derived from 16PF of Cattell – 1949).
Sometimes the “OCEAN model” is used according to the different dimensions of the model. There are different models like the NEO-PI.
- (O) Openness: appreciation of art, emotion, adventure, uncommon ideas, curiosity and imagination;
- (C) Conscientiousness: self-discipline, respect for obligations, organization rather than spontaneity; goal oriented;
- (E) Extraversion: energy, positive emotions, tendency to seek stimulation and companionship of others, go-getter;
- (A) Amenability: a tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others;
- (N) Neuroticism or neuroticism: contrary to emotional stability: tendency to easily experience unpleasant emotions such as anger, anxiety or depression, vulnerability
The Big Five do not categorize people into five categories, but rate them five times differently. These five dimensions constitute a minimum to describe in their entirety the character of a person, because the traits they designate prove to be independent.
- The Big Five limits: slightly redundant, and not quite complete.
- A weak note may reveal an opposite dimension or indifference to that dimension.
Personality Disorders – in each of the ten categories of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) corresponds a unique profile on the Big Five; these profiles share a high neuroticism and low level of enjoyment (Saulsman and Page, 2004);
Smoking is correlated with a high level of neuroticism and a low level of pleasantness and conscientiousness (Incredible, isn’t it ?)
Other tests
DISC, Classical Temperaments, NEO-PI, MMPI, R-Drive, iPersonic, 16PF, Zodiac, Love Languages, KWML, Life Path, M:tG, and Hogwarts houses… just to name a few.
- 16PF: At the primary level, the 16PF measures 16 primary traits constructs, with a version of the Big Five secondary traits at the secondary level.[Cattell]. The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), is a self-report personality test developed over several decades of empirical research by Raymond B. Cattell. Then the most recent edition of the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), released in 1993, is the fifth edition (16PF5e) of the original instrument. The self-report instrument was first published in 1949; In final, the second and third editions were published in 1956 and 1962, respectively; and the five alternative forms of the fourth edition were released between 1967 and 1969.
- NEO-PI; Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Personality Inventory (NEO-PI)
- The DISC assessment is based on the research of William Moulton Marston and later work by John Grier, and identifies four personality types: Dominance; Influence; Steadiness and Conscientiousness. It is used widely in Fortune 500 companies.
- Other personality tests include Forté Profile, Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Swedish Universities Scales of Personality, Edwin E. Wagner‘s The Hand Test, and Enneagram of Personality.
- The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) was developed in September 2012 by the DSM-5 Personality and Personality Disorders Workgroup with regard to a personality trait model proposed for DSM-5. It includes 25 maladaptive personality traits.
- The Process Communication Model (PCM), developed by Taibi Kahler with NASA funding, was used to assist with shuttle astronaut selection. Now it is a non-clinical personality assessment.
To know more :
- Correlation Enneagram vs the Big 5
- Enneagram, tool for change
- To chose between Process Com and Enneagram
- Back to the main page Enneagram
